Summary

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with Yellowjackets star Sophie Nélisse.

During her Ladies Night conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Nélisse revisits her days training for the Olympics in gymnastics, and her experience honing her craft as a young actor.

She also discusses Shauna’s biggest moments in Yellowjackets Season 3, including the end of ShaunaHat, becoming the Antler Queen, and more.

Sophie Nélisse’s Shauna Shipman has been through quite a bit since crashing in the wilderness at the start of Yellowjackets, and in Season 3, all of that heartbreak, fear, and anger comes to a head in a very dangerous way for everyone around her. After losing Jackie (Ella Purnell) and her baby, Shauna is consumed with rage, and discovers she has a taste for power, the dangers of the wilderness, and the blood-soaked thrills it offers. That results in her consistently hurting other characters to get what she wants.
Just to name a few, she has it out for Mari (Alexa Barajas) all season, she essentially bullies the other Yellowjackets into voting Coach Scott (Steven Krueger) guilty of burning down the cabin, and in one of the most crushing scenes of the season, she shatters Melissa’s (Jenna Burgess) heart, putting an end to the ShaunaHat romance. It’s cruel and often unforgivable behavior, however, Nélisse insists that she’s still rooting for Shauna, and her reasoning ties to an essential building block of a good villain figure. “You see all of her roots and all of the reasons that led her to the person that she is in the third season.” She added, “I wouldn’t say that everything that she’s done is obviously forgivable, but I understand where it all stems from.”
During her visit to Collider Ladies Night, Nélisse weighed in on the fan reaction to Shauna’s behavior in Yellowjackets Season 3, shared her devastating take on the demise of ShaunaHat, and also revealed what 90s Shauna would think of who Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) is in the present day.
Do You Hate Shauna This Season? Sophie Nélisse Insists, “That’s Fine!”

“But I love rooting for a villain.”

Has 90s Shauna crossed one too many lines for you? Did watching her encourage Melissa to slice Coach Ben’s Achilles push you over the edge? Or perhaps it was when Shauna firmly put a stop to the possibility ofanyonegetting rescued. No matter where your breaking point landed, it’s okay. Sophie Nélisse totally gets it.

“You’re allowed to hate her. That’s fine! She’s hatable this year. It’s fine. But I love rooting for a villain. The quality of this show is that, because the showrunners did such an amazing job at crafting these characters so beautifully, you still root for them despite everything that they go for. At least, I root for Shauna.”

Even if you’re not rooting for Shauna like Nélisse, Yellowjackets ticks an essential box when crafting a character who does terrible things – the show always offers context for why she makes such decisions. Nélisse continued:

“You see all of her roots and all of the reasons that led her to the person that she is in the third season. And I find so much empathy. I wouldn’t say that everything that she’s done is obviously forgivable, but I understand where it all stems from. For me, I really believe in the saying that hurt people hurt people. I think that’s so true. She has undergone so much grief and loss, and this is just a teenage girl that doesn’t have the tools and the environment around her to help her cope in a way that’s sane and healthy.”

The Crushing Truth at the Core of the ShaunaHat Break-up

“It’s as if Melissa has utilized everything that Shauna’s taught her, but in an actual positive way.”

Image via Paramount+

Many characters suffered at Shauna’s hands this season, but there’s one person who endured Shauna’s bullying and wrath more than most. It’s Jenna Burgess’ Melissa.
At the start, one might have thought a little romance could have been just what Shauna needed. But, as time passed, it became abundantly clear that Shauna was dragging Melissa to the dark side. In Episode 9, however, Melissa has enough.
In “How the Story Ends,” an interaction between Melissa and Hannah (Ashley Sutton), and Melissa expressing sympathy for Hannah’s situation, sets Shauna off. Rather than back down, Melissa stands her ground, and it drives their argument out of their hut and into the middle of camp for the rest of the Yellowjackets to see.

“Jenna was just so good and so vulnerable and so heartbreaking to watch that it made my job harder because I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be yelling at you and crushing your heart.’ But I love that scene because you finally see Melissa stepping up for herself. It’s as if Melissa has utilized everything that Shauna’s taught her, but in an actual positive way, and is the version that Shauna wishes she could be, but can’t because she has, now, the strength after being forced to slice his Achilles heel, and she has now also discovered a new part of herself, but is actually still, in her core, a good person. So I think having that reflected so visually in Shauna’s face, I think is really hard for her because she wishes she could be that version of herself, but she can’t.”

Image via Paramount+

There are quite a few unforgettable performance beats in that scene, but as someone always drawn to a strong reaction shot, I couldn’t help but zero in on Shauna’s expression after Melissa asks, “Why can’t you just be a nice person?”

“I think I really just wanted to show the inner struggle. Because she’s been so dark, I wanted it to be that moment where people still see hope within Shauna, and see that it is there within her and that she is not a bad person fundamentally to her core, but she’s just buried so many emotions so far down. And it’s so humiliating to be put on the spot in front of so many people, and I think, so far, we’ve only seen Shauna opening up to Melissa, and so Melissa didn’t choose her moment to confront her in front of the group, because for Shauna in that moment, it’s too much to admit to something. It would be opening such a can of worms in front of so many people, and so I just wanted to showcase the inner struggle between her actually not wanting to lose Melissa, but also, on the other side, wanting to maintain power over the group, and how conflicted she feels.”

What Would 90s Shauna Think of Present Day Shauna?

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Related

“Van Palmer, You Mean the World to Me”: ‘Yellowjackets’ Star Liv Hewson Had a Very Specific Goal When Filming That Plane Scene

While on Collider Forces, Hewson discusses Van’s eagerness to call her mom, why she and Tai are on such different paths, and more.

While much of Yellowjackets is focused on how the present-day characters manage and cope with what they did in the 90s, Liv Hewson’s latest Collider Forces interview sparked another curiosity: what might the 90s characters who survive think of who they become?
Hewson’s Van might have the best possible outcome in that respect. While discussing their approach to filming the plane scene after Melissa (Hilary Swank) kills Van (Lauren Ambrose), they explained that their work in that scene was rooted in the fact that 90s Van is proud of who she becomes. “Young Van adores Van in the present because, you made it. You made it out, and I’m going to look after you now.”
As one might expect, Nélisse’s Shauna would have a very different reaction to Lynskey’s Shauna.

“I think she would be disappointed, at least because I think it’s very clear that Shauna’s biggest fear is to go back to that mundane lifestyle that she had before the crash, and she’s just really become the person that she hates the most. So I think she’d be disappointed to see that she hasn’t turned out the way she was hoping to, and she still lives in that small town and is married to the high school sweetheart. And I think she’d find it sad to see that, again, she hasn’t forgiven herself, because all I see of Shauna in this season is someone that, like you said, needs to grab onto that lifeline and just needs someone to hold her and say, ‘It’s okay,’ and to take some of the weight off of her shoulders, and to find it within her to have some self-compassion. Clearly she’s never been able to find that within her, so I think she would be very sad to see that she hasn’t really been able to break free from her own prison.”

Looking for even more from Nélisse on Yellowjackets Season 3, and also some insight into her experience leaving competitive gymnastics behind for acting? Be sure to watch her full Collider Ladies Night interview in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to the conversation in podcast form below:

Yellowjackets

Release Date

November 14, 2021

Network

Showtime, Paramount+ with Showtime

Showrunner

Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, Jonathan Lisco

Directors

Benjamin Semanoff, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Deepa Mehta, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeffrey W. Byrd, Liz Garbus, Scott Winant, Eva Sørhaug, Jamie Travis

Writers

Liz Phang, Sarah L. Thompson, Ameni Rozsa

Yellowjackets Season 3 is available to stream in full on Paramount+.
Watch Here